There may have been 11 people onstage at this past Wednesday night’s Republican “debate” at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, but one unseen individual might as well have jockeyed for camera position alongside Trump, Fiorina, Carson, et al. So frequently was Kentucky clerk of court Kim Davis’ name dropped, a suggested victim of religious persecution in violation of the First Amendment protections, she should have sat atop Reagan’s plane wearing an American flag t-shirt, one solitary tear slipping down her cheek. Would have meshed nicely with the rest of the evening’s complete lack of nuance and reality.

Like the GOP field’s total misappropriation of mid-August’s doctored Planned Parenthood videos to incite cynical, rational thought-clouding outrage within the party base, Davis has proven a useful gift that keeps on giving. For years, vocal Republicans have accused Democrats of waging a war on Christianity that threatens religious liberty. That this claim is a handy cover for the party’s fight against equality of every type, as dramatic as it is effective, only reinforces its utility. And Davis has become the misanthropic rallying cry’s It Girl.

It seems that among the many counterbalancing rights conservatives have chosen to disregard while uplifting religious freedom and the right to bear arms (freedom to marry, right to life), the pesky old separation of Church and State has also found its way to the scrap heap. But like so many acts of Republican hokum, wishing away the Founding Fathers deliberate effort to prevent religious wingnuts from dictating to the rest of us, does not make it so.

On September 14, the marvelous, erudite and openly gay actor George Takei wrote How Kim Davis Violated the First Amendment for The Daily Beast. He observed:

“So let us go back to high-school civics. When discussing the religious freedom portion of the First Amendment, there are not one but two clauses we must consider. The commonly understood and cited part, and the one Ms. Davis trumpets, is the Freedom to Worship guarantee. Under that clause, the government isn’t allowed to pass any law, or take any action, ‘prohibiting the free exercise’ of religion…

This argument falls apart, however, once you take into account the other, less commonly understood clause. The ‘Establishment Clause’ prohibits the government from aiding or assisting any religion, or religious viewpoint, over any others. This was a key point for the founders of our country, who were of diverse faiths and did not want a state religion, or even any state-endorsed religions.”

Ah yes, but there’s no way that conservatives will heed the good sense of a homosexual Hollywood type. What about another deeply religious writer, such as Mennonite Tara Culp-Ressler? On September 11th (yes), she published I’ve Refused Work Because Of My Religion. Here’s What Kim Davis Doesn’t Understand About Faith for Think Progress.

After a deeply personal description of the choices that have allowed her balance between beliefs and modern professional demands, she completely exposes the falsehood of Davis’ canonization by the right:

“Carving out space for individual workers’ religious objections cannot infringe on the rights of the people whom they’ve been tasked to serve. Nonetheless, in our post-Hobby Lobby society, the calculus has recently tipped much too far toward allowing religious individuals to wield their beliefs to diminish the rights of other people.”

I mean, what else is there? And yet multiple media outlets are reporting this weekend that Davis may still be squatting in her job whiledenying unaltered marriage licenses to Rowan County Kentucky couples. If there’s any tyranny afoot, it’s Davis’ insistence on collecting the paycheck of a government official without executing the duties of the position. Anyone working in the private sector will be happy to tell you. Misconduct is fireable for ANY reason, religious or otherwise. You like free markets, Republicans? By design, our Constitution precludes a public employee from religious dominance over his or her constituents. It’s why Davis has been to jail already. It’s high time she be excused from her position if she finds it so morally objectionable.

Change.org created a petition to recall Davis. However the Kentucky state legislature won’t convene until early 2016. The people may be stuck with the clerk’s services for several more months. That fact is a regrettable asset to a 2016 Republican primary crowd leveraging divisiveness, judgment and hate over actual working policy discussions.

I’m not sure it’s going to work as well once the Super Tuesday hangover ends and the general election candidate has to start the inevitable pivot. The convenient, temporal partition from the separation of Church and State joins the party’s repulsion of women and immigrants in making Republican candidates nationally unelectable.

The new season of the National Football League begins this Thursday night. But as dedicated fans complete their fantasy drafts and excitement before the first official kickoff builds, we must admit this hasn’t been the typical NFL break. Instead, spring and summer 2015 have been the seasons of “Deflategate,” or what the National Review characterizes as “The Brady Botch.”

We all know the backstory, with a few definite, verifiable facts. During the January 18, 2015 AFC Championship contest between the New England Patriots and the Indianapolis Colts, the Pats used underinflated game balls that resulted in an easier grip for superstar quarterback Tom Brady. Whether those balls were deliberately deflated to gain an illegal advantage for the Patriots is a question likely to be debated until long after Brady makes his way to the Hall of Fame.

What is certain is that other teams, including the Baltimore Ravens, lodged similar allegations against New England during the 2014 season. It is also not the first time that the Patriots, Brady and head coach Bill Belichick have been accused of football malfeasance. The website YourTeamCheats.com boasts an impressive catalog of alleged New England skullduggery, including the 2007 “Spygate” incident, which led to a $500,000 fine for Belichick and cost the team its first-round selection in the 2008 NFL Draft.

It is also a fact that Tom Brady destroyed a cell phone associated with the NFL’s “Deflategate” investigation. He is under no legal obligation to explain why, and perhaps it’s in Brady’s long-term best interest never to utter another word about it. So I’m sure remaining skeptics trying to hold onto respect for the quarterback legend could have done without his early September Facebook post, written shortly after U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman overturned Brady’s four-game suspension:

“While I am pleased to be eligible to play, I am sorry our league had to endure this. I don’t think it has been good for our sport – to a large degree, we have all lost…I am also sorry to anyone whose feelings I may have hurt as I have tried to work to resolve this situation.”

It’s the “hurt feelings” language that’s really galling. The carefully chosen, dismissive rhetoric from a person who fails to comprehend the situation as anything more than a crabby personal inconvenience. Brady might as well have ended his post with the hashtag #SorryNotSorry. It has been abundantly clear throughout the episode that the only victim Brady really sees is himself, his rich, handsome, model wife having, rules-are-for-regular people self.

And in a way, it’s easy to comprehend Brady’s attitude. Shortly after the January controversy exploded, Hall of Fame receiver Jerry Rice had himself a good laugh on national television, discussing his own experience with breaking the rules. NBC Sports writer Mike Florioquoted Rice as saying on ESPN, “I know this might be a little illegal, guys, but you put a little spray, a little stickum on [gloves], to make sure that texture is a little sticky.” The football legend offered this as an alternative to underinflated balls, saving Tom Brady future hassles with embarrassing rule enforcement.

This should have been a scandal. The NFL banned stickum in 1981 – before Rice was drafted. Instead as Florio observes, “At a time when many were expecting Rice to claim that his words were taken out of context or that he was joking, [he] has taken to Twitter to admit that he did it, and that it was more than ‘a little illegal.’”

And there you have it. Integrity and regulation, the ease of flouting these standards, has long been a breezy joke amongst the NFL, its leadership and players. I’m not even going to touch Commissioner Roger Goodell and his “command” of the league throughout “Deflategate” and indeed any other crisis over the course of his nine-year tenure. There’s just not space enough in this particular column. He’s excessive when restraint is warranted, and criminally unreactive when strength is needed (one name: Ray Rice). I’m a woman. The league has a misogyny problem it tries to solve with pink jerseys in October. Concussions. I could go on.

But here’s the thing. I am a real fan. I’m one of those eager maniacs obsessing over the prospects of my fantasy team, looking for new spots to watch games with my boyfriend and wondering if Peyton Manning will get his groove back this season. I want more from the sport I love than this grotesque level of human cynicism.

The NFL would be wise to remember the hard learned lessons of Major League Baseball. After the 1994-95 league strike, and the tremendous fallout from a performance enhancement scandal that left dozens of high-profile stars with tattered careers and legacies, baseball officially surrendered its long run as America’s favorite pastime…to football.

I live in Chicago and hockey season starts next month. I’m just sayin’.

On August 12th, writers Amy Chozik and Trip Gabriel of the New York Times collaborated on an article entitled, Carly Fiorina Emerges as a G.O.P. Weapon Against ‘War on Women’ Charge. In it, they quote Kellyanne Conway, a Republican strategist, as saying, “[Republican] Donors have looked at her as the answer to Hillary.” In a GOP field overrun with misogyny, the perception of Fiorina as Clinton’s conservative foil may partially explain the former’s recent rise in the primary polls.

But calling out the obvious discrimination the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard often experienced at the hands of her male colleagues, hardly makes Fiorina Norma Rae. After Donald Trump’s abysmal references to debate moderator and Fox News commentator Megyn Kelly’s “bleeding” earlier this month, she told Jake Tapper of CNN, “I’ve had lots of men imply that I was unfit for decision-making because maybe I was having my period. So I’ll say it, O.K?”

This narrative is helpful and accessible to the uninspired press and provides an air of undeserved legitimacy to a 2016 Republican campaign notable for its brazen rhetorical assaults on women and brown people. And we thought 2012 was the lowest we could go. Perhaps recognizing that the party is well on its way to alienating a combined majority of voters (again) in a national election, journalists such as Seth McLaughlin of The Washington Times have resorted to sad Jedi mind tricks. He opens a recent piece with this:

For years, a question lingering over the Republican Party has been whether it was ready for a woman to lead the ticket in a presidential election. Now some are wondering whether Carly Fiorina could be the one to punch through the glass ceiling — possibly setting up an all-female race against Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton.

This fantasy ignores a few inconvenient facts about Fiorina’s anything but feminist record. As part of her stated platform, the failed California Senator opposes a government requirement that would give private sector workers paid leave. This despite the clear fact that the absence of paid leave opportunities disproportionately affects female employees. Fiorina’s position reflects a lack of empathy with the challenges faced by her gender, as well as an ignorance about the way real Americans live. Democratic Senator Kristen Gillibrand of New York was quoted by The Huffington Post as saying:

I think it will overwhelmingly [hurt] her with both male and female Republican voters because overwhelmingly, they all support paid leave…She may just not be aware, she may be in her own world, her own bubble where she can afford child care, she can afford support when she needs it, but her low-wage worker can’t.

Another area of feminist failure for Fiorina? Despite the relatively short 95-year history of female suffrage, she cast ballots in a mere 25 percent of the California elections for which she was an eligible voter. Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times reprints this explanation from the CURRENT CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT: “I felt disconnected from the decisions made in Washington and, to be honest, really didn’t think my vote mattered because I didn’t have a direct line of sight from my vote to a result.” Susan B. Anthony she is not. Nor is she in possession of an iota of self-awareness.

The hypocrisies continue in conservative and unmotivated media efforts to paint Carly Fiorina as a viable alternative to Hillary Clinton’s message of female empowerment: her backward-looking health care policy (Deregulate! Obamacare is destroying us!), opposition to funding for Planned Parenthood. I could go on, but plumbing the depths of Fiorina’s not-feminism starts to get depressing.

She is no more a competitor for the general female vote than Sarah Palin was in 2008. While Fiorina may be less laughably and proudly buffoonish than the former Governor of Alaska, the idea of her as a serious option for women, or voters who care about them, is equally ridiculous.